Howard Solomon

"Art for me is a spiritual journey. It’s trying to figure out who am I and what’s important to me." - Howard Solomon

This episode of Queer Spirit interviewed Howard Solomon. The conversation explored Howard’s spiritual journey from Judaism, to a Quaker meeting house, back to Judaism, and the spiritual practice of Tai Chi. Howard, a retired historian, also discussed the larger historical context of the war in Ukraine and the dark, troubling history of the ways minorities, religious and sexual, have been treated.

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About

Howard Solomon is an academic historian and community activist who, in an earlier life served for over 30 years on the faculty of Tufts University and taught courses on European history, the history of sexuality, and the history of stereotyping. Howard has also been a scholar in residence at the Sampson Center for Diversity at the University of Southern Maine. Among other projects, he curated a traveling exhibition about Charlie Howard, the young gay man who was murdered in the early 1980’s in Bangor by three high-school boys, entitled “Twenty Years Later: How Far Has Maine Come?” He’s also spoken throughout Maine on antisemitism and continued to write, including an essay about the creation of Portland as a so-called “gay mecca.”

Over the years Howard’s community engagements have included Merrymeeting Arts Center, the Maine Task Force on LGBT Youth, Maine Jewish Film Festival, Maine Initiatives, the Matlovitch Society, and the National Coalition Building Institute. In 2007 Equality Maine recognized Howard for being the remarkable queer treasure that he is by giving him a lifetime achievement award, which might give some folks the impression that Howard has slowed down or even entered his dotage. Not so, because Howard keeps shifting gears and in recent years has been devoting more time and energy to producing art (see below), especially collage and found-object sculpture.

Howard Solomon's Acrylic

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"If Not for Others, What Am I?" is 8" x 6", acrylic and paper collage on canvas by Howard Solomon. Solomon created it in 2018, along with the two other pieces seen above of the same dimensions and mediums, "If Not for Myself, Who Will Be for Me?" and "And If Not Now, When?" The three titles come from Rabbi Hillel's three questions, or admonitions: get yourself in order, align with others, act. For Howard Solomon, these are the distillation of Jewish ethics. They also parallel the principles which animate Solomon's taichi practice: get my breath and balance in order, become mindful of the space I'm in, begin.

Queer Spirits
Howard Solomon